The Burned Out B: Dear Teachers

The Quiet Revolution: Escaping Teacher Victimhood

• Nicole • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Feeling like you're two seconds from flipping a desk but still somehow taking attendance? You're not alone. In this raw, unfiltered exploration of teacher burnout, we dive deep into the uncomfortable truth about how the education system runs on guilt, glitter, and unpaid labor—and why so many educators have unconsciously accepted this as normal.

We pull back the curtain on the cycle of victimization that keeps teachers stuck. You know the pattern: checking off burnout symptoms while simultaneously talking yourself out of them, justifying your exhaustion with "others have it worse," and trying surface-level fixes like classroom rearrangement or attitude adjustments that never address the root causes. The most troubling revelation? While the system definitely treats educators as expendable, many teachers have internalized this belief and begun treating themselves the same way.

The path forward isn't about more self-care checklists or performative wellness. It's about questioning the conditions you put on your own self-worth, recognizing that "no" is a complete sentence, and making decisions from a place of self-trust rather than fear or indoctrination. When grounded decision-making replaces reactivity, that's when the magic happens—you stop camping out in survival mode and start living aligned with your values, not systemic expectations.

Ready to deprogram from a system that profits from your sacrifice? Join me in this movement to break free from burnout and reclaim your value. Because you weren't meant to be a martyr with a lanyard—you were meant to rise. Share your thoughts by messaging @theburnedoutbee on Instagram or emailing nicole@theburnedoutbee.com.

Thanks for listening!

Connect with me on instagram: @theburnedoutb

I'd love for you to message me what you thought, what it made you think about, your reflections, and of course I want to know what's been coming up for you in the classroom! I will never name names...unless you ask me to!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Burned Out Bee, dear teachers, the podcast for educators who are two seconds away from flipping a desk but still somehow remember to take attendance. Or maybe you didn't somehow remembered to take attendance, or maybe you didn't. I'm Nicole the burned out bee, who's a former classroom teacher, curriculum builder, interrupter of bullshit and professional wearer of the I'm fine mask Around. Here we say the quiet parts out loud, we call out the systems that run on guilt, glitter and unpaid labor, and we absolutely do not accept toxic positivity as a wellness plan. Grab your lukewarm coffee, lock your classroom door and take a breath. You're home. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably wondering am I burned out? And you've probably Googled it too. You've probably gone through the entire list of symptoms, checking them off while simultaneously talking yourself out of them. Checking them off while simultaneously talking yourself out of them. It's not that bad, we say as we pound our fourth cup of coffee before 11 am. We justify, we minimize. We tell ourselves other people have it worse. Other teachers have it worse. Other professions surely have it worse. Other professions surely have it worse. And then we start wondering if it's even bad enough to warrant doing something about it. And what does that say about how you're valuing yourself? So we do something that makes us feel better. We organize a closet Maybe it's your kid's closet, that's a nightmare. We buy ourselves a shadow work journal that we write in two times and then put it on a shelf because we feel better enough, at least for now. Y'all that's not healing.

Speaker 1:

We are still stuck in that victimization that we feel from the system every single day, and that's what we're talking about today. It's an uncomfortable conversation about how victimization is partners with dishonesty, and I'm not talking about being dishonest with other people. I'm talking about being dishonest with other people. I'm talking about being dishonest with yourself, because you can fool your admin when they come by to see you know how are you doing. You can fool your students with your routines and your affect. You can fool your spouse I'm fine, hell. You can even fool your dog that you maybe didn't have the day that you actually had, but you can't fool yourself, because you live in there and we like to pacify ourselves by saying things like you know, what goes around comes around or they'll get theirs when we're thinking or talking about people who we feel have slighted us whether that be our admin, our students, our husbands, children, dogs, again, again. But we do that when we're talking about other people.

Speaker 1:

And what would happen if we applied that same logic to ourselves, if we expected that the effort that we put in would come back to us, if we thought we would get ours for all of the wonderful intentions that we're putting into our work? We don't apply that to ourselves. We give ourselves a hall pass on both our good and our maybe less proud moments, and truly, the system is treating you like you're expendable. That's not in your head, but here's the part that you might not like to hear so very much. Your actions are showing that you agree with it.

Speaker 1:

You're treating yourself like you're expendable too, and that's what we call indoctrination, the process of teaching a person or a group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically and that's the kicker Uncritically. You, we, I, we're expected to accept the sets of conditions given to us by a system that was designed for efficiency, not for people. We are expected to accept those uncritically. I am giving you your permission slip to be critical, because not all change is improvement, but all improvement comes from change. So, friends, we've got to change something.

Speaker 1:

And what do we have? Control over Ourselves From our little bubble, our individual bubble. Whether you want to call that your teacher bubble, I call it the individual bubble because I know that all of these things, all of these stuffed down emotions, all of these you know people like to call them microaggressions. I don't think anyone's intending to be aggressive. I think that it's unthinking. It can look from our little bubble like people succeed by stepping on others and you know the bad things happen to good people. It really, really, on the surface, does look and seem to be that way, really really on the surface does look and seem to be that way. But that's why we've got to get deeper than that. You and I both know that the things that you're saying to yourself in your own head, they could be as small as you know. God dang it. That was a stupid instructional choice or it was a stupid interpersonal choice. I could have done better. I could have done better if I'd only fill in the blank, or it can go to full on self-loathing. Why can I not get it together? Why can I not thrive? And the kicker here really is that that nasty inner monologue by your asshole brain is fueled by the conditioning and the gaslighting that you experience in the place where you spend more than half of your waking hours. This is in the environment that you are in most of the time that you are awake.

Speaker 1:

And so we try these little surface level fixes. We try to change our classroom decor, we try to rearrange the seating chart. Maybe this one won't erupt in chaos Spoiler alert, we all know that it will. We try giving ourselves an attitude, pep talk. I used to do this all the time. I would look at my teacher, bestie, and I would say I'm going to change my attitude. We self-medicate. We do that with coffee, with wine, with Target runs, and you know, let's be honest, all three definitely not at the same time. Do not have your wine and then pair that with driving to Target, please and thank you.

Speaker 1:

We go to therapy that, honestly, sometimes feels like we're paying somebody to witness our TED talk about our own personal trauma. And, by the way, here's my rub with the whole fix it from the outside, in model with our PDs, our checklists, with our performative therapy. They're all branches of the same exact tree. The medical and the mental health systems love to treat the symptoms and not the root causes. Very much like our own educational system. And while we're at it, let's acknowledge that therapists are human too. They've got bills to pay, they have caseloads to maintain, and while there are wonderful and ethical therapists out there, I've yet to meet one that says you know, you're good to go. We've all been conditioned to not question care because it's not our area of expertise. Well, I'm here to make you your own area of expertise. What would that feel like?

Speaker 1:

Now here's another kind of uncomfortable truth. The system, whatever system it is that you're talking about, educational health they will always revert to what keeps them alive, the system I'm not talking about people here. The system will self-correct to what keeps it alive, very much like a monohull sailing boat. Right, it could tip over, it could roll all the way over, but it will always self-right. It has those structures in place that it will always self-right. It has those structures in place that it will always self-right, even when the admins who care, or feel like they care, they eventually end up choosing the rules over you if it means keeping themselves comfortable, keeping themselves out of the fear that they're rocking the boat, because that is uncomfortable, isn't it? It is uncomfortable to rock the boat. You can get comfortable with it. You can even learn to enjoy it when you see the effects.

Speaker 1:

But to be quite honest, I have met coffee filters with more support than a lot of districts give their teachers, and that's why, as humans, we have to hold ourselves and others to better standards. If you say that something is a value of yours, you have got to live that. Don't hang that on a poster in your classroom. Now, when it comes to making ourselves, you know the matter of our own expertise. Here's what's really excellent news for you is that teachers are masters of Socratic questioning. We know how to lead a student down a path until that aha moment just smacks them in the face. We love smacking them in the face with an aha moment Like that's honestly what most of us live for. So why are we not using that on ourselves? I mean, I know the answer it is fear, it is discomfort. But let's start here.

Speaker 1:

What conditions do you put on your own self-love? If I were only this, if I could only do that, then I would feel worthy of my own love and acceptance. What hoops do you make yourself jump through before you can rest? How many loads of laundry is it? How many chores is it? And then what do you tell yourself that you need to achieve before you are quote, unquote good Oof, that one's a tough one, right? Because we have all of these preconceived notions about what is good and what is not good. And I'm here to tell you that that is 100% a matter of perspective, because the spoiler alert here is number one. You don't need to be good in whatever definition that your paradigm has created for you. There is no good, there is no bad, there is only the meaning that you are putting on a person, place or event. And also, before I just kind of leave this entire thought, no is a complete sentence, and when you add an exclamation point to that, you have now got yourself a personality.

Speaker 1:

So how do we get out of this victim loop? Because it's no secret, like we definitely feel that sliding, we definitely feel that victimization. Feel that sliding, we definitely feel that victimization when you feel helpless. That presupposes victimhood of legislation, of bureaucracy, of mandates, of students, of administration, and the system will happily validate that for you over and over and over again until it becomes your default setting. Is it your default setting? It was my default setting.

Speaker 1:

But when you are ready to step out of that cycle of victimization, that's when the magic happens. And, to be quite honest, there is less effort than you think, because what happens is that grounded decision-making replaces reactivity. You stop camping out in survival mode like that's just where you live now. Right, we can move from that area. Let's go ahead and pack a pod right now and just get ourselves ready. You start to trust yourself enough to make moves that align with your values, not with indoctrination, and not with your fear, because survival mode is okay unless you've been living there for five years without a tent, right? So instead of fantasizing about running away to Mexico to escape your classroom, let's imagine making the choice to stay or to leave from a place of absolute and total trust in yourself.

Speaker 1:

That is what Dear Teacher is here for to help you decondition, regulate and come back to you, back to you. So I want to hear from you what do you have to do before you allow yourself to rest? Message me at theburnedoutbee on Instagram, or nicole at theburnedoutbeecom via email, and don't miss next week's episode, because this is a good one. We're diving into respect versus compliance, not in terms of our students, in terms of us, and why. Knowing that difference will change how you work, how you live how you love, how you lead. Until next time, bees, if this episode dragged any skeletons out of your filing cabinet, just know. Same Thanks for listening to the Burned Out Bee. Dear teachers, if it hit you in the soul or in the sarcasm gland, send it to your teacher bestie, you know the one. Follow the show, smash that subscribe button like it's a broken copy machine and come hang out on Instagram at theburnedoutbee, where the real talk continues, and remember you weren't meant to be a martyr with a lanyard. You were meant to rise. See you next time, b.